I've found the secret of happiness: glamping

It was a revelation. Having agreed, against my better judgment, to spend the weekend camping at a friend's house, I turned up to find myself and my baby daughter put up in a capacious tent.

This is "glamping", as it is known: lovely tent, lights, loos and fantastic company. As the sun went down, everyone sat around the fire and drank beers and ate corn on the cob and baked beans.

It was an amazing night.

But what was more amazing was how a disparate group of people, many of whom did not know each other, spent the evening happily chatting away to each other like this. It all happened so naturally: and I spent the evening wondering why..

Was it about being thrown together out of the blue, albeit in rather more comfortable circumstances than we had expected (most people turned up expecting to sleep on the ground)? Was it the shared indignities, no matter how comfy the tents? No point in dressing up or wearing make-up: we all smelled of smoke. We all spilled melted butter over our laps.

We had endless conversations about sleeping bags versus duvets the man sitting next to me swore by the Snow+Rock subzero sleeping bag he'd bought only the day before: "If I get cold, I get my money back." And it seemed to me that at a time when we are, according to a recent report, increasingly unhappy and popping antidepressants on a daily basis, camping might be the way forward.

For a start, anyone can do it.

There are endless books telling you how one called Cool Camping is flying off the bookstore shelves just now.

And we're not just talking campsite camping here. No, this is wild camping: you go and set up your tent in a remote field or on a mountain. You can add the extra glam bits tea lights and sheepskin rugs and bits of Moroccan carpet as you like.

But really the point of camping is still that it forces you to meet other people and talk to them.

And given how good that feels, why should camping be confined to the countryside? My friend was in Holland Park yesterday and she said she was desperate to pitch a tent.

Can you imagine how wonderful Hampstead Heath, Regent's Park, Brockwell Park and the rest would look with a fiesta of tents erected on them? Then maybe Londoners could sit and chat to strangers for once.

So I urge Ken Livingstone to open London's parks up on future Bank Holiday weekends and let people camp there: it would just make us all so happy..